Wednesday, 18 April 2012

During this stage of the planning process I found that I had a number of ideas that I wanted to use for a villain character. Having conducted and extract relevant research on villain characters I then became very fond of creating a character with a medieval appearance. This is mainly due to the fact that during my childhood many of my animated heroes where based in a medieval period, such as the Smurfs, Pinocchio and the movie – sword in the stone. Gathering the research based on current villain characters, assisted in the development of my character building greatly. It gave me ideas based on small details such as sword style, clothing styles, footwear etc. It was also important to document in this stage how these characters behaved in terms of body language that they used to express themselves and their use of facial expressions. Each of the characters had facial expressions that suited their personalities. This is important as it brings out the characters characteristics for the viewer much more strongly. Building the character Balthier and then planning his personality was difficult, it required much more research into the use of facial expressions and what facial expressions were commonly used to express different expressions such as happy, sad, anger and grumpy etc. Developing a moodboard and using brainstorming techniques assisted greatly in the planning stages of my character providing me with a vast library of ideas that I could use.

Storyboard

Once I had an idea and had gathered enough research into the construction of my character, I could now move onto the storyboard development stage. In this stage of the planning I could now begin to build my character using my chosen storyline and developing my character with the use of facial expressions and body language in each of the scenes. I designed a number of storyboards within this stage. The first storyboard that was created was totally different from the storyline now. During this stage I had to resort back to the planning stage several times to start from scratch. This assisted with the learning skills of how to plan, design and build a character better as it provided me with better knowledge each time that I had to resort back step one.

Modelling

This was the longest stage of developing my character. I used my research on villains and their environments to build a basic stage for my character. I chose to use a plain white background and a single tree as this way it would keep the viewer focused on the character and his actions. I encountered a few problems during the modelling stage, one of them being problems with the ‘link’ tool and getting the hand to attach to the sword during stationary movements. After some detailed research on links and constraints within 3DS Max I decided to use modelling techniques to make the hand appear attached to the sword as problems such as these could not be resolved.

Building the character was a challenged but it was an excellent learning process for the modelling development stage. During this stage I used many of the techniques that I had learnt in previous 3D modules to assist in the construction of Balthier. Using templates on planes enabled me to create better, more accurate models of the clothing such as jumpers, footwear and trousers etc. Once all of the body parts had been constructed I then applied the skills I had learnt during the lectures and tutorial to apply the biped and skin on to the character.

Each of the scenes was created individually, this assisted greatly in preparing each of the scenes and attempting to stick to the storyboard as close as possible. It also assisted in the rendering process and piecing all of the clips together when placed within Premiere Pro. Many techniques were used within this stage of animating such as the use of Morpher modifiers etc. Using the Morpher modifier was a unique and extremely beneficial tool when it came to animating facial expressions as these could not be produced via key frames and just basic hand tools or via the biped.

I’m extremely pleased with the outcome of the modelling process and I feel that my character represents very accurate characteristics of Balthier from the planning and storyboard stages. Much of the research gathered during the planning stage has been applied during the modelling stage and has proved extremely beneficial in creating accurate characteristics for Balthier in Facial expressions and developing body language.

Balthier’s characteristics that are displayed throughout the animation show his emotions clearly and are represented clearly through his facial expressions and use of clear body language. Throughout this modelling process I feel that there are more techniques that could have been applied to the animation that may have enhanced the characteristics of Balthier’s actions. Balthier’s facial features should have been designed with more detail; this may have benefited his expressions and use of emotions to express his thoughts when attempting to remove the sword from the stone.

Rendering and Finalising

During the final stages of production of the animation I used Adobe Premiere Pro to piece together the final animation. I used premiere pro as this software is what I’m most familiar with and accepts the uncompressed rendered formats from 3DS Max. I used 3DS Uncompressed rendering format to maintain maximum quality. During this stage I used video research such as Youtube to assist in the cutting and editing of the animated video clips and making the best from the video content that I had.

I rendered the final animated video in FLV and MOV formats. I used these particular formats because they maintain the highest levels of quality and are most compatible across both Windows and MAC’s.

Sunday, 1 April 2012

To piece together all of the animation scenes it was necessary to use a software such as Adobe Premiere Pro. I chose this software as it was most compatible with reading Uncompressed AVI files and had the best editing functionalities.

I placed all of the rendered scenes into the workspace and began to cut them up and piece them together so that all of the shots worked in combination with the script and storyboard.

It was vital to get the timing of the close up shots correct and not to lose any of the animation.

To create the titles I found it easier to create these in Windows Movie Maker, render them in high definition and then import them into Adobe Premiere Pro and place them into the workspace.

I decided not to use sound as a background or to create an audio track to go alongside the animation. I did however, trial creating an audio track with my own voice and using objects to create sound effects but these trials didn’t turn out well so it was decided that no audio would be used only in the ending credits.

The final render of the animation project was rendered into the format of an .FLV 1080 x 720p resolution.

I felt that this format maintained the highest standard on quality and could be played back on most computers without buffering.

Firstly I had to begin by creating my scene. The scene is a very simple scene as I felt that it was necessary to spend more of my time on the animating than on the modelling of the scene itself.

The scene is made up of a tree that I created in one of my other modules and that I have imported into this animation, the sword and the stone.

The background to all of the animations was white. I chose white because I felt that it would bring out more detail within each of the animations and allow the view to see more detail on the facial expressions.

Creating Key frames for animation

To begin animating my character I had to create individual movements and key frames.

For each of the scenes I followed the storyboard and printed off all of my research and screen shots of the videos that I had analysed in order to gain better knowledge and a clearer understanding of how the body functions when performing actions.

For each of the movements that I had to create in each of the scenes, I had to adjust each of the biped parts manually. Ensuring that I was always using the ‘autokey’ ensured that for every movement that I made on the character a new key frame was generated.

Using the Autokey tool:

Moving biped parts to create animation:

This was a lengthy process to ensure that my character behaved in the way that I wanted him to and to ensure that each of the biped parts moved in correspondence to my research.

To make the animating process easier I used the ‘hide’ tool on the skin so that the biped elements were more exposed. This would make it easier to select the biped parts and move them to create different animation techniques.

Using the Morpher modifier

Once all scenes had been created and all of the body movements within the scene were correct it was now necessary to animate the facial expressions that would go with the actions of my animated character.

To begin with I had to create a number of copies of the master head onto the scene. I made ten copies of the heads for each of the scenes.

On each of the heads, I adjusted the polygons to create separate facial expressions. My character does perform any talking and so only requires the use of facial expressions to expel his feelings and actions to the viewer.

To turn these different facial expressions on individual heads into one animating face I had to apply a ‘morpher’ modifier onto the master head. (The master head was the head connected to the biped model).

Once the morpher modifier was applied I could now pick the individual heads with facial expressions in the scene and apply them to the morpher modifier.

Once all the heads were selected I could now begin to perform animation of the facial expressions. This was done in a very similar way as to animating the body actions. For each change of facial expression I adjusted the settings within the morpher modifier and using the ‘autokey’ this would create individual key frames for the changes.

Once I had created facial expressions at necessary points along the timeline and in conjunction with the body animations and script, I was now ready to begin to render each of the scenes.

In order to turn Balthier into an animating character it was necessary to fix a biped structure inside of Balthier, turning the model of Balthier into a skin for the biped skeleton.

To begin this process I first begun by placing a biped structure onto the scene, this biped structure is the standard one found within 3d studio max. Due to the design of my character it wasn’t necessary to create or use an alternative biped.

Once the biped had been placed onto the scene I then imported my character. I had to ensure that the biped was the same size and scale as the model of my character. This would make the rigging process much simpler and ensure that when animating my character that no polygons would be left behind.

Once the models were of the same size I could now move the biped into the model of my character. With all elements of my character selected and using the ‘physique’ tool I could now attach the biped to my model, turning my model into the skin of the biped. This process is known as skinning or rigging.

Applying the Physique modifier and rigging

To ensure that all of the polygons of the skin were being picked up by the biped, I had to adjust the envelope settings. This process adjusted the settings for which part of the biped would be responsible for selective polygons on the skin of my model.

This process can often be time consuming ensuring that all of the biped skin is being controlled by the correct part of the biped structure.

Once this process was completed my model of Balthier can now move like a human being and will now have any of the movements that a human can perform.